Warm and sterile towels are more than just creature comforts in the modern world; they have therapeutic as well as medicinal value. While it may be merely desirable to have a warmed towel available after bathing or showering, a warm and sterilized towel could be an absolute necessity in a medical environment. It is well known that a warmed towel serves to offset the chilling effect due to evaporation of water from the body after showering, even at normal room temperatures.
From the user's perspective, the feel of a warm towel against the skin immediately after a shower or a bath is a delight. If the experience is enjoyed in one's home, it is usually because one has managed to complete a shower shortly after having run a load of towels through the dryer. Today's typical dryers do not have a sterilizing feature. So although a warm towel may feel good on the skin it may be serving as a vehicle for germs. It is impractical for dryers to have a sterilizer because even if a towel were sterilized it would have to be stored in a sterile environment until needed. Clearly this would be impractical. Having a sterilized towel handy outside of a hospital environment is rare, some first aid kits contain sterilized gauze and bandages but these are not warm nor do they cover the same skin area as that of a towel.
With the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, flesh eating bacteria and other pathogens, cleanliness is of the utmost importance. Sterilizing a towel is the best way to ensure that there are no pathogens on surface that is going to be in direct bodily contact. If a towel contaminated with a dangerous virus or bacteria came in contact with several individuals the potential for the spread of disease is greatly increased. The pleasant soothing feeling that a warm towel provides after a bath or shower is positive reinforcement to a user to continue using warmed towels on a regular basis. By combining a sterilizing feature, a user will benefit from a clean sterile towel free of dangerous bacteria and other pathogens. Unfortunately, at this time there are no devices that both warm and disinfect towels that are designed for the home market.
Furthermore, it would be advantageous to have a device that would not only warm and sterilize a towel but was also portable and could be easily transported. A lightweight device that an individual could carry and take on an airplane that was no larger than a small suitcase would be the optimal solution.
At this time there are no devices available to the public that provide such portability. Today, only hospitals and well stocked medical facilities have the means to provide warm sterile towel to patients. Environments outside of hospitals may provide warm towels but they usually have not been sterilized. There is no provision at this time for portable convenient means for providing warm and sterile towels. A heating device should be capable of warming uniformly through several layers of towel over a period of a few minutes.
While a number of apparatus have been proposed for this purpose, all of them have many disadvantages. These disadvantages include complexity, expense, permanent installation as well as the inability to satisfactorily sterilize a towel or other fabric article. Prior art towel warmers have hung a single section of a towel in front of a blower so that warm air is directed against one side of the towel. Such warmers generally rely on relatively slow heat conduction from one side of the towel to the other to thoroughly warm the towel. Other warmer have placed a heating element within a perforated support mounted in housing. However, in such warmers, no provision has been made for forcing air to flow over the towel from within the towel support or around the support within the housing. As a result, the warming is relatively slow and uneven.
Other towel-warming devices utilize a system of racks that have rods for hanging a draped towel under a hood. A blower mounted in the hood above the towel blows air downwardly over the outside of the towel.
Yet in another variation, a towel is hung freely from a bar of the support, a blower-heater below the towel directs warm air upwardly across the freely hung towel. The disadvantage of all such devices is obvious, all of these devices are intended to be permanently mounted on the floor or installed in the wall of an existing bathroom. Clearly this is not a portable solution.
In the past there have been portable towel warmers introduced. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,918,290. This device includes a rigid cabinet, an electrically operated heater, perforated means for supporting the towel, and means for exhausting heated air. The disadvantage of this device is relative complexity, noise produced by blower and considerable weight and size. Furthermore, this device has no provision for sterilization. While a towel may have been warmed, the device itself may be responsible for spreading disease; lastly this device still requires considerable space for storage.
Nothing in the art discloses a device that could have practical applications at a disaster relief site, temporary hospital or even a traveler's hotel room. All of the aforementioned devices suffer from shortcomings that make them unacceptable for the purposes of a portable sanitary towel warmer in either normal use or in emergency situations. Natural disasters, terrorism and other cataclysmic events dictate the need for a device that is portable and can efficiently warm and sterilize a towel.